Underrated / Overrated

Screenwriters seeking to learn the art of the biopic need no other master class than Paul Schrader's structuralist fantasia on the life of Yukio Mishima. This 1985 film is an intellectual head-rush that melds biography and stylized literary adaptation. LACMA (5905 Wilshire Blvd.) screens it at 7:30 p.m. Friday, and Criterion issues a new DVD set next month. The movie is also notable for featuring a great Philip Glass score.

Last Saturday's opening of works by Michelle Lopez and Vishal Jugdeo at LAXART was very cool, but the event's Campari sponsorship meant all the drinks contained the titular, nasty aperitif. The booze may have been free, but gagging down that bitter, red liquid was too high a price to pay.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

Wait, did they really release a movie titled "What Happens in Vegas"? Starring Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz as a coupla crazy kids who meet in Vegas, get wasted and wake up to find out that (a) they're married and (b) they can't stand each other? That couldn't possibly be true, could it? Let's just double-check the calendar. . . . Yup, just as we thought: It's 2008. What's next, a "Got milk?" caper flick?